Who We Are

NARAL Pro-Choice Washington is the leading grassroots pro-choice advocacy organization in Washington state, and we believe that every woman should be able to make personal decisions about the full range of reproductive health options. NARAL Pro-Choice Washington works to protect every woman’s right to access the full range of reproductive health options, including preventing unintended pregnancy, bearing healthy children, and choosing legal abortion. NARAL Pro-Choice Washington is the state affiliate of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

This Week in Pro-Choice News

Plan B will now be available to women 15 and older without a prescription: Finally, some great news!! The FDA approved a measure for the pill to be sold to women over the age of 15 without a prescription. In addition, it will be over-the-counter so that women do not have to ask for it from the pharmacy or wait until the next day if the pharmacy is already closed. Right-wing scolds are arguing, against science and reason (big shocker), that now younger women will be coerced into taking the pill. Ah yes, conservative groups. More concerned with some mythical boogeyman forcing young women to take the morning after pill than with the ability of women to make actual choices about their actual bodies. [CNN]

Anti-choice group releases video that implicates absolutely no one but media is going crazy over it anyway: Live Action is a group that tries to undermine legally operating abortion clinics by tricking workers into saying that they would do illegal things. In a video surreptitiously filmed by a woman paid by Live Action, a clinician in a New York clinic that performs late-term abortions reacts to a hypothetical about an aborted fetus still breathing with some confusion. Legally performed late term abortions do not result in living, breathing babies who are then murdered. However, due to tricky editing, Live Action made it sound as though the clinics has actually killed fetuses that were still alive after an abortion. Guys, if your side can literally only gain recognition and followers because of overt lying and propaganda, maybe you should rethink your position. [Media Matters]

Barack Obama became the first sitting US president to address Planned Parenthood on Friday: Obama promised to fight for our cause and criticized the many outdated and ridiculous abortion laws that have passed in various states recently. Let’s hope he manages to get this country turned around. [Christian Science Monitor]

Abortion clinics in Virginia are closing after passage of crappy new laws: Hillcrest Clinic was the first abortion provider to close in Virginia after a new law requiring medically unnecessary updates to the building passed recently. No other clinics providing any kind of surgery were affected by these laws. Good job, Virginia. I’m sure that no woman anywhere will ever get an abortion again if you force the legally operating clinics to close. You should definitely keep spending tax money fighting against a legal medical procedure. [Washington Post]

Swarthmore students protest college’s response to rape: Twelve students at Swarthmore are filing an official complaint against the university. They allege that the school intimidates victims of sexual assault and dissuades them from formally reporting their attacks. Students at a number of colleges are arguing that the response to sexual assault is weak and dangerous. Colleges are supposed to be places were students can make the transition into adulthood, not places where sexual assault victims are shamed into silence. [Think Progress]